Resurrection Mall available now from Down & Out Books.
Look for the newest Nick Forte novel, Bad Samaritan, in January, also from Down & Out Books.

One Bite at a Time

Monday, June 19, 2017

A Conversation With Angel Colon

Officially, Angel Colón is the Anthony and Derringer
Award-nominated author of No
Happy Endings, the Blacky Jaguar series of novellas, and the upcoming
short story anthology, Meat City on Fire
(And Other Assorted Debacles). His fiction has appeared in multiple web and
print publications including Thuglit, Literary Orphans, and Great Jones Street.
He’s repped by Peter Steinberg at Foundry Literary.

Just between us, we’ve been online friends for a few
years now and there are few who are more fun to trade ideas with. Read on if
you doubt me.

One
Bite at a Time:
Tell us about this Blacky Jaguar character.

Angel
Colon:
Blacky Jaguar is the last son of a bitch you need walking into your life.
Ex-IRA, current FBI most-wanted, and all-time asshole. He's a swaggering,
loudmouth, villainous prick who happens to let his conscience--what little of
it there is--get the better of him on most occasions, though, there's usually
an obscene amount of collateral damage left in his wake.

I
like to say he's a hurricane what walks like a man.

In
other words: the ideal drinking partner.

OBAAT: So how’d he get
hooked up with the Cool Clux Cult?

AC: Blacky's an idiot,
but he's not dumb. After his exploits in The Bronx during Fury the man knows he's working against the clock and will be
behind bars before long. That said, he figures a road trip to Graceland is in
order as it's been on his bucket list. Unfortunately, Blacky needs money and
finds himself wrapped up in an old friend's mess against a shadowy internet
cabal making life pretty damn difficult for the residents of a Tennessee town.
The Cool Clux Cult is a frustrating problem for Blacky - how does he win
against something he can't punch? And how does a man with a background in a
heavily political movement (which is me putting the IRA lightly, I know) handle
coming face to face with ideologues and modern American social justice?

OBAAT: As a fellow Down
& Out author, I was tickled to death to see No Happy Endings was
recently nominated for an Anthony Award for best novella. Give us some idea how
proud the other nominees should be to have been included in your company.

AC: Who doesn't want to
be on a slate with a story about stealing semen in the middle of a hurricane?
That's some prestige money can't buy!

All
jokes aside, it's insane to see No Happy Endings get enough love to even
be shortlisted. I'm proud and also pretty fucking humbled that enough people
thought enough of the story to include it in their lists for nomination.

That
said, it is infinitely entertaining a
novella about a sperm heist and Johnny Shaw's outstanding short story, “Gary's
Got A Boner,” were both nominated. I think this year's B'Con may have a subtle
theme.

OBAAT: Let’s talk about
writing in general for a minute and the process that earned the nomination. Do
you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing the hard work is
in the revisions? Something in between?

AC: It's a big mix but I ultimately
edit as I go and then I edit some more followed by ugly crying and more
editing. Novellas are a little easier to burn through and come back to sorting
out in multiple revise phases. The length is also useful as I can read the
story out loud to my wife - which is sort of a tradition for Blacky - and spot
where the voice is off or when I use redundant phrases.

Honestly,
the hard work is constant. No Happy
Endings, which earned the Anthony nomination for Best Novella this year,
went through three completely different protagonists and a POV change. It took
me a while to find a sweet spot that lived up to my initial "pitch"
and even then what was printed was not what I originally had in mind - which is
pretty fortunate!

OBAAT: I know the feeling. I was 40,000
words into my third Nick Forte novel when I realized I had a tar baby on my
hands. I outlined what had been done, outlined what else needed to happen, and
threw away a bunch of stuff. End result was a Shamus nomination. My current
novel, Resurrection Mall¸ started out
as a Forte story until I realized 50,000 words in it didn’t belong there, so I
threw away almost everything and started over with it as a Penns River novel
that eventually got a contract from Down & Out. At what point did you
realize you had to go back to the drawing board, and what was your reaction
when you decided you had no choice. Mine was, “Awwww, fuck.”

AC: It's a palpable,
ragged breathing, veiny-necked anger when you have that moment of "Awwww,
fuck." It happened with Blacky
Jaguar Against the Cool Clux Cult, too. I had entire subplots in this
bad boy that forced two from-the-ground-up rewrites. One bit: there was going
to be a pair of teenage girls on a Bucket List style road trip—one was dying
from leukemia—and they literally latch
onto Blacky in the middle of this whole mess. Ultimately, they were a
distraction and had their own legs. Silver lining there is maybe that becomes
its own thing. Really, that's about what keeps me sane sometimes - the idea
that what I throw out isn't necessarily a wasted effort. Sometimes it's just
meant to fit somewhere else.

OBAAT: You’re into novellas,
as No Happy Endings and the Blacky Jaguar series all fit the form. What
appeals to you most about novellas? Do you have trouble getting your stories to
fit comfortably between short stories and novels?

AC: I've actually
completed five novels now. One is with my agent and the other two are being
retooled. What I like about the novella is the format allows me to tell stories
that aren't 'aligned' with whatever the latest flavor of the month 'sure path
to publishing success' may be. I can chase those random concepts that have legs
longer than flash or short fiction would allow without having to pad the damn
thing into oblivion.

Let's
be honest, Blacky Jaguar is fun as hell and I love that people always ask for
more of the character, but I truly believe I would not get that response if I
made you read through 300-plus pages of the character. I think writers need to
recognize that finding the right length for a project is just as important as
the actual project. I can't tell you how often I read a novel that could have
lost 100 pages easily or read a short that has the legs to be novella/novel
length but falters.

Writers
have so many options these days. Exercise them!

OBAAT: Excellent point about
how Blacky—all characters, all
projects—have a prime length. Too short and people feel unsatisfied. Too long
and you’re trying to wring blood from a stone. (We’ve all read books—and
series---where that happens.) You and I have a similar take on that. The catch
is that the archetypical “best seller” has an approximate length that people
expect, and one deviates from that at one’s own peril. As a fellow deviant,
what are your feelings about writing books that may limit your mass appeal?
More to the point, who do you write for?

AC: I write for my kids -
weird answer, so let me elaborate. I write material that makes me happy and
doesn't necessarily compromise my specific vision because I want my rugrats to
see that this pursuit, and all the goddamn work that comes with it, is meant to
be satisfying to the artist as much as to the consumer. Can I write to the
market? Sure. Will I? Maybe. I can't say for certain an idea might grab me that
leans heavily to the mainstream. (Hell, one or two novels I'm working on just
might). That doesn't mean I'll ever sacrifice my voice, though. It took me a
long damn time to be comfortable with my voice and I don't want to walk away
from that.

In
short - if I can be an example to my kids in that sense - it's 100% worth it. I
don't want them to believe the payoff has to be money or fame. Those things are
certainly nice and definitely something to strive for, but the satisfaction of
creating and sharing is something that I am so happy to have had the good luck
to experience.

OBAAT: Novellas have made a
bit of a comeback recently as e-books, largely because production costs make it
difficult for print publishers to find a good price point. Down & Out is
bringing Blacky out in paperback. Was that your idea, or theirs, and how did it
come about?

AC: Down & Out rocks? It's a
pretty cool partnership now that Shotgun Honey and Down & Out have joined
forces. That said, I've been lucky that all of my releases so far have been
available in print and digital! I am that damn cool. On a more professional
note, though - I think there's still something to holding a physical book no
matter the length. With the way Amazon and other sellers are built, I think
it's ridiculous to not offer readers an option - especially if the cost is at a
minimum.

OBAAT: So I’m guessing I’ll see you in
Toronto. Tell you what, if you don’t win the Anthony, first drink’s on me. If
you do win, first drink’s on you. I mean, you’re celebrating and almost
certainly wouldn’t have won without the OBAAT bounce, right?

AC: For sure I'm in
Toronto, but I'll be on a plane when they don't call my name. Scheduling
demands my ass back in the States on Sunday afternoon. My wife and kids give me
a wide berth for this stuff, but being gone from Thursday is pushing it. (Also,
the only other flight out would have me landing later than I need to be driving
on the Jersey Turnpike than I'd enjoy). Still, we'll certainly have a drink or
two and I'll bitch about something involving the current state of crime fiction
politics as is required at Bouchercon.

OBAAT: We’ll just have to have
that drink in advance. I’ll buy and you can pay me back after you win—with interest—in
St. Petersburg.

Lots of ways to order Res Mall

Worst Enemies, Book 1 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Grind Joint, Book 2 of the Penns River series

Click the cover to buy

Forte 4: A Dangerous Lesson Available Now! Click the image below to purchase.

Chicago Private Investigator Nick Forte’s official task is to find out what he can about Jennifer Vandenbusch’s new suitor, who fails to measure up in the eyes of the family matriarch, Jennifer’s grandmother. This seems par for the course for Forte, as his personal life has been leading him through a series of men who treat women badly, though none nearly as badly as the Thursday Night Slasher. Forte lives on the fringes of the investigation run by his old friend Sonny Ng until elements of Forte’s case and life dovetail with the Slasher investigation, leading to Forte discovering more about the crimes—and himself—than he wanted to know.

The Man in the Window

"...we see him getting rougher, tougher and darker book by book. There are multiple twists in the end, two cool sidekicks, good action scenes and some pretty nifty Chanderlisms in this book, adding up to a perfect PI read"--Sons of Spade blog

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of (Nick Forte 2)

It's a kind of authorial magic that The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of works as a tribute and as a story, and that neither aspect interferes in the least with the other… I can imagine this book finding its way into a class on writing crime fiction as an example of how to pay tribute to one's predecessors while at the same time writing a story that can stand on its own. It's an impressive accomplishment.--- Peter Rozovsky, Detectives Beyond Borders, December 18, 2014

About Me

Two of my Nick Forte Private investigator novels (A SMALL SACRIFICE and THE MAN IN THE WINDOW) received nominations for Shamus Awards. I also write a series of police procedurals set in the economically depressed town of Penns River PA, published by Down & Out Books. A non-fiction essay, “Chandler’s Heroes,” appeared in Spinetingler Magazine online in October of 2013.
I live in Laurel MD with The Beloved Spouse.